


Release/Realise

by Hope



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Sandman
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-11
Updated: 2004-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:11:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For ffenest.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Release/Realise

**Author's Note:**

> For ffenest.

He has to slog across a wide green lawn before he gets to George, a far-too-rapidly approaching dark-robed figure with a flame of red hair above. 

"Alright, then?" he asks breathlessly, and George nods, grinning, his face as white as his teeth.  George has a flower tucked behind his ear, white and formed like the trumpet of a gramophone that Mr Weasley had brought home once, enchanted to laugh if someone tickled its needle. 

"Where'd this come from?" Fred looks down as George reaches for his chest; George's fingers almost seem to brush through his skin and into his flesh before they slip beneath the blood-red stone hanging there. 

"Don't know," Fred says, and then, "garnet! It must be from the powder, in the potion.  Same reason you've got stinkweed in your hair, there."  George's hand flies up to cup around the flower tentatively, gaze straining up as if he can see it. 

Fred laughs, and the overlapping overflowing _hah_s bubble up out of the turf and wind up around George's ankles like vines.  "Stoppit!" George chortles, trying to shake his feet free, and it just makes Fred laugh harder.

"Oi," George sniggers at length. "You sound like a crow when you laugh."

Fred gasps a response, ribs aching, then looks beyond George's shaking shoulder to see a white plinth with a black raven on it.  The raven is almost blue against the lavender-coloured sky, and it cocks its head at Fred, black eye gleaming.

"Come on, then," it says.  Fred steps through the sand towards it, George turns and hovers by his shoulder, white robes glimmering at the corner of Fred's vision.

"Come on… what?" Fred blinks, puts the tips of his fingers in his mouth. They taste like ink and the metal smell of the mercury in Snape's potions lab. 

The raven flutters its wings impatiently.  "Didn't you come to see the master?"

"George!" Fred exclaims, and turns to find that George is standing several yards behind him, spinning a spiderweb between his outstretched fingers.  "We're in the Dreaming! The potion must have worked!"

George raises an eyebrow, looking as if Fred had just told him that selling Exploding Jellymite with flammable toasters was a lucrative marketing venture.  "Of course we are, Fred.  That's why we took the potion…?"  George was in front of him, then, looking back over his red-clad shoulder, the raven hopping and fluttering on ahead.

They sit in armchairs with dragon feet (it took Fred a while to get his to stand still long enough for him to sit down) around a table made out of an up-turned teacup.  The teacup is clear, and through it they can see tiny grinds of tealeaves swirling in its base, moving into shapes; a flame, a dog, a pair of trousers.  The raven hops nearby, plucking fat pink worms out of the thick-woven carpet.  George wraps his hands around a huge mug of hot chocolate made of melting letters; Fred wraps his hands around George's hands and sips tentatively.

"Gentlemen," a wizard sits opposite them, beard blue-black like the raven's wings, eyes in shadow, from the brim of his worn hat embroidered with tiny cat-claws and whiskers, Fred thinks; until he takes it off and lays it on the table, and the shadows remain.  His robes are dark, blue, purple, green, black, and his fingers long and white like wands made of bone.  "Moonflower," he inclines his head towards George, then towards Fred, "and garnet.  It appears your spell was successful."

He pauses, and Fred would think he's watching them intently but for his utter stillness.  The carpet fades around the wizard, moulders, tiny green shoots force their way up through it, mushrooms spring up around his feet.  "Well," Fred says.

"Mister Morpheus,"

"Sir…"

They glance at each other.  George's eyes are blue, then black, like Dream's robes; his own robes are the same colour as his hair.  Fred looks at his hands on George's cup, which has turned into the horn of a bull, girded with silver.  They speak together. "We have a business proposition."

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/26558.html


End file.
